Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Over the last few years, for various reasons, I have had a
chance to read some of the old classics that I had not managed to find time for
earlier in life – Milton’s Paradise Lost, for example, or 1 Maccabees in the
Bible.I was expecting that my more
mature skepticism would make them a bit annoying to read, or that I would find
the stylistic genius of some of them captivating.What I did not at all expect was that I would
find them screamingly funny.The reasons
why, I suppose, might be the topic of another blog post one day.

Anyway, the latest example came when I saw the British TV
Series Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell, that underreported figure in the court
of Henry VIII, whose reign has been otherwise mostly covered ad nauseam in
books and on the big and little screen.I realized that I was curious about just how he related to Oliver
Cromwell, another well-execrated figure a century later in British history.And so, with the aid of Wikipedia, I set
myself to figuring out just how the Cromwell name happened to descend to
Oliver, and what happened to it after Oliver’s death.

The first funny fact I discovered was that while Thomas
Cromwell was indeed a commoner, of no noble descent, he was in fact related to
Henry VIII.This happened because Thomas
Cromwell’s sister Katherine married a Welsh brewer who also lived in Putney and
had dealings with Thomas’ father, a fellow named Williams.It turns out that Master Williams was
actually related to Jasper Tudor, that risqué Welshman who married a previous English
King’s widow, thereby making his son Henry VII eligible for the throne.In effect, Thomas Cromwell was both a common brewer’s
son from Putney and the King’s in-law.Only in England …

Now the picture gets even sillier.Once Thomas Cromwell started prospering,
Williams changed his last name to Cromwell – so Williams/Cromwell’s son became
Richard Cromwell.The criterion for the
lower nobility was to have a certain amount of income per year, and Richard
Cromwell became a useful employee of Thomas, reaping a fair amount of estates
yielding the necessary cash.Thus, when
Thomas was executed, Richard kept his status in the nobility as well as the
estates he had claimed, not to mention the Cromwell name.Thomas’ direct descendants did all right as
well, but ceased to be noble (iirc) over the course of the next century.In any case, Oliver did not descend from
Thomas, but rather from Richard.Thus,
Oliver the Commoner was in fact an in-law both of the Tudor/Stuart kings and of
Thomas Cromwell – not to mention being descended from Richard’s nobility.Only in England …

Now, England in those days practiced primogeniture, which
meant that Richard’s estates when he died did not pass to Oliver’s ancestor but
to a first-born Cromwell son.As a
result, when Oliver’s father died, Oliver did not inherit enough to qualify him
for the nobility.Later, of course, the
death of a relative in the first-son line gave him enough money to qualify at
the lowest level of nobility – that is, he was eligible for the House of Commons
but not for the House of Lords.Yes, to
be some sort of noble in England in those days all you needed was money.Only in England …

Anyway, by the time of Oliver’s death, he had accumulated a
surprising number of sons and daughters.His direct heir was Richard (his first son had died during the Civil
War), who was briefly Lord Protector after Cromwell’s death but was widely
viewed as a total incompetent after he failed to solve the split between Army
and Parliament and left the door wide open for Charles II to walk into the
throne.Thus, nothing bad happened to
him after Charles II arrived.Other
Oliver children, especially the daughters, married into high nobility and their
descendants did just fine.But it was
Oliver’s last child, Katherine (iirc), who really made out like a bandit.She married into high nobility and her direct
descendants were high nobility all the way into the 1800s.Really, the high nobility didn’t care that
they were related to Oliver Cromwell.But by the end of Oliver’s life, he had potloads of income, and the high
nobility wanted some of that income.And
you can bet that the monarchy treated Oliver/Katherine’s descendants as high
nobility, too.Only in England …

Except that it wasn’t quite only in England.I once read a biography of King William
Rufus, that strange Norman figure who succeeded William the Conqueror, and that
biography went into great detail about how some of the terms of today’s English
government came about:They were Norman posts
of trust assigned to the nobility attending the King, corresponding to places
in the King’s dwelling that they were supposed to take care of.For example, the Lord High Chamberlain was
supposed to take care of the King’s bedroom.The Lord High Chancellor was supposed to take care of the King’s prayer
room, the chancel.And then there was
the extremely important noble responsible for the King’s kitchens and production
of beer, possibly to prevent the King being poisoned.That is, he was the guardian of the stews,
the Stew-Ward or Steward.

Somewhere along the line, these customs got translated to
Scotland, and when the line of Kings ended, they were succeeded by the line of
Stuarts – Scots for Steward.And so,
when Elizabeth Tudor died without issue, the Stuart kings of Scotland became
heirs to the English throne.

Now think about that.Thomas Cromwell was the son of a common English brewmaster, and an in-law
to an English king.Oliver was an in-law
to Thomas, and opposed his in-law King Charles I, who was descended from a
Scottish King’s brewmaster.You gotta
admit, that’s pretty funny.

For the last five years or so, I have been watching the
measures of atmospheric carbon as measured at the peak of Mauna Loa in Hawaii
(where contaminating influences on measurements are minimal).I have become accustomed to monthly reports
where CO2 has increased a little more than 2 ppm over the same month the
previous year.This year, things have
changed drastically.

On Wed. Apr. 13, for example, I found that (a) monthly CO2 last
month had increased by 3.6 ppm year to year; (b) the previous three days had
been recorded as about 409.4, 409, and 408.5 ppm, of which the first
measurement was about 5 ppm above the same day last year and about 10 ppm above
the monthly average 1 ½ years ago, and (c) last year’s average increase had
been confirmed as 3.05 ppm, breaking the record set in 1998 for greatest CO2
increase (the data from Mauna Loa go back to 1959).

[UPDATE:3 weeks ago
was the first weekly average above 405 ppm.Last week was the first weekly average above 406 ppm.This week was the first weekly average above
408 ppm – 4.59 ppm above the same week last year]

Meanwhile, figures gathered by IEA suggest that fossil-fuel
carbon emissions essentially were flat over the 2014-15 time period.Other studies by CarbonTracker suggest that
other net sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon (uptake by the land and the
oceans taking carbon from the atmosphere, “fire” [e.g., forest fires on land]
acting as a source of atmospheric carbon) have been essentially flat for 15
years or more.

What is going on?Why
the apparent large rise in Mauna Loa CO2 growth rates over 2014-16 and the
apparent flat rate of growth in atmospheric carbon in 2014-15 according to
IEA’s data supplemented by CarbonTracker?Far more importantly, why does the first seem to signal an alarming
development in global warming, while the second seems to promise that our
efforts in sustainability and global compacts to combat global warming are
beginning to bear fruit? And finally, which is right?

[Note:Because of
time constraints, I won’t be able to discuss things in depth.However, I feel it is important that readers
understand the general reasons for my conclusions]

Implications of Hope and Alarm

Let’s start with the second question:Why does the IEA data seem to offer hope of
significant progress in combating global warming, while the Mauna Loa CO2 data
seems to signal alarm about the progress of global warming?If the IEA is right, then over the last 2 years we have
begun to make significant progress on reducing fossil-fuel pollution – despite
a global economy that grew significantly in 2014 and 2015.The result is that the rate of growth of CO2
has been flat the last two years.Because of the recent global climate agreements, we can expect future
years to slow the rate of growth, and in the not-too-distant future to begin to
actually decrease atmospheric CO2.Optimistically, we can hope to reach atmospheric stasis at 500 ppm,
which will not keep global warming below 2 degrees C, according to Hansen and
others, but should keep it below 4 degrees C, where the consequences become
much worse.

If the ML CO2 data is right, then we are not only making no
significant progress in combating global warming, we may very well be at the
start of more rapid warming.For the last
15 years or so, the rate of growth of atmospheric CO2 has been slightly more
than 2 ppm (the previous 15 years saw a growth rate slightly more than 1.5 ppm
per year).A bit more than 2 ppm per
year for 15 years translates into about 1 degree Fahrenheit of average global warming.If we now shift to a bit more than 2.5 ppm
per year, that should translate into about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit of warming
over the next 15 years.It will also
mean that we “bake in” 2.67 degrees C of warming since 1850, most of it in the
last 60 years, and will be well on the way to about 4 degrees C of warming
(blowing past 500 ppm easily) by the 2050-2060 time frame, if we continue with
present efforts rather than increasing them.

Which Is Right?

Now let’s tackle questions 1 and 3:what are the characteristics of the IEA and
ML data that lead them to apparently different conclusions, and which of the
two is more likely to be right?

Start with the IEA data on fossil-fuel emissions per
year.IEA depends primarily on
self-reporting by nations of their use of electricity and heating, supplemented
by extrapolation based on prior experience of the amount of CO2 released by
coal/gas/oil-based heating and electricity generation.

There are several reasons to view this data as likely to
underestimate actual fossil-fuel emissions, and likely to have that
underestimate increase over time.First,
the IEA data does not cover emissions during fossil-fuel production and
refining.The upsurge in fracking would
show up in the IEA data as a net decrease in pollution (switching from use of
oil to natural gas), while independent studies of wellhead-to-shipment
emissions suggest that their total use-plus-produce emissions are almost
equivalent to that of oil. Second, there
has been an ongoing shift in business’ fossil-fuel use from Europe/the US to
developing countries like China and India.Not only is these countries’ ability to report the full amount of
fossil-fuel emissions less, they are probably less efficient in using fossil
fuels to heat and generate electricity in comparable facilities – and the IEA
appears to apply the same efficiency standards to comparable facilities in both
places.

Now let’s turn to the Mauna Loa CO2 data.Long experience has determined that any additional
CO2 detection from nearby sources is transitory and will wash out in the
monthly average. Likewise, on average,
Mauna Loa tracks near the center of Northern Hemisphere response to fossil-fuel
emissions primary sources, and can be cross-checked against a global CO2
measure which is one month behind in reporting but has been showing a
comparable upsurge (3.4 ppm in February). [Note:The IEA shows 0% increase in fossil-fuel
emissions in 2015, while global and Mauna Loa data show a 0.75% increase in
total CO2 emissions]

What are possible causes of the discrepancy aside from
underestimated emissions data?There
could be increased “oceanic upgassing” as melting of sea ice allows release of
carbon from plants in the newly exposed ocean – not likely, as it is an effect
not clearly detected before.There could
be decreased “uptake” from the oceans as they reach their capacity to absorb
carbon from the air – but such an uptake slowdown should happen more
gradually.And then there is the el Nino
effect.

I haven’t found a good explanation yet of just how el Nino
affects CO2 positively, much less how it affects CO2 proportionally to the
strength of the effect.However, the
largest recorded el Nino up to this time happened in 1998, data indicate that
the 2015-16 el Nino is about as strong, and the 1998 el Nino produced
approximately the same outsized jump in CO2 relative to the previous year as
the 2015-2016 one has, according to the helpful folks at Arctic Sea Ice (neven1.typepad.com).So Mauna Loa recent data could be explained
as (constant underlying CO2 growth rate) plus (2015-2016 el Nino effect).

However, aside from all the reasons cited above for being
mistrustful of the IEA data, there is another reason to feel that fossil-fuel
emissions have actually been going up as well: 1996-99 were years of big economic
growth almost certainly leading to large increases in fossil-fuel emissions and
thus the underlying CO2 growth rate. In
other words, to be truly compatible with 1998, the equation more likely should
be (constant underlying CO2 growth rate) plus (significant 2013-16 increase in
fossil-fuel emissions and hence CO2 growth rate) plus (2015-16 el Nino effect).

All this reminds me of the scene in Alice Through the
Looking-Glass where Alice starts walking towards her destination and finds
herself further away than before.You
have to run much faster to stay in the same place, another character tells her,
and much faster than that to get anywhere.I view it as more likely than not that we are continuing to increase our
fossil-fuel contribution, and that we will have to run much harder to keep the
CO2 growth rate flat, much harder than that to start the growth rate decreasing,
and much harder even than that to begin to decrease overall CO2 any time in the
near future.

Facts and the Habit of Despair

In one of Stephen Donaldson’s first books, he imagines a
world beset by evil whose only hope is a leper from Earth.In those days, leprosy had no treatment and
the only way for lepers to survive was to constantly survey oneself to detect
injuries that dead leprous nerves failed to warn oneself of, every waking
second of every day – to constantly face one’s facts.In the new world, he tells the leader of the
fight against evil “You’re going to lose! Face facts!” The leader, well aware
that only the leper can save his world, says very carefully, “You have a great
respect for facts.”“I hate facts,” is
the response.“They’re all I’ve got.”

I have concluded above that it is more likely than not that fossil-fuel
pollution and therefore the underlying CO2 growth rate continues to grow – and that
appears to be the fact delivered by the best data we have, the Mauna Loa and
global CO2 measurements.I hate this
fact; but it seems to be what we have.

And yet, Donaldson’s same series delivers an additional
message.At its improbable world-saving
end, the leper asks the Deity responsible for his being picked why he was
chosen.Because, says the Deity, as a
leper you had learned that it is not despair, but the habit of despair, that
damns [a leper or a world].To put it in
global warming terms:Yes, the facts are
not good.But getting into the habit of giving
up and walking away in despair whenever you are hit by these facts is what will
truly damn our world.Because the
horrible consequences of today’s facts are only a fraction of the horrible
consequences of giving up permanently because of today’s facts.

Wayne Kernochan

About Me

I have recently retired. Before retirement, I was a long-time computer industry analyst at firms like Aberdeen Group and Yankee Group, and before that a programmer at Prime Computer and Computer Corp. of America. Sloan/MIT MBA, Cornell Computer Science Master's, and Harvard college degrees. Used to play the violin, and have written unpublished books about personal finance, violin playing, and the relationship between religion and mathematics, as well as three plays, two musicals, a screenplay on climate change, short stories, and poetry. I intend to use this blog in future both to continue to enjoy the computing field and to pursue my interests in many other areas (e.g., climate change, history, issues of the day).